Gulf Crossing from Dog Island

It has been over a week since we made the crossing but it is still fresh in my mind.  It was definitely not an Eddy Wag recommended day.  We started with beautiful sailing weather for the first half of our trip which quickly deteriorated over the night crossing.  The forecasted 5 sec delay between waves was more like 1-2 seconds with 4-6 footers (occasional 8 footer, yikes!) and the winds were steady at around 17 knots with gusts up to 27 knots overnight.   The rough seas battering the boat made it feel like Lake Superior on a bad day.  It was also exhilarating learning to use the sails again.  We found that the Sea Hawk is much faster with the new sails than our old stretched out sails and we made good time even with our sails fully reefed.

Look closely and you will see that our boat is well heeled on a port tack (wind coming over the starboard side).

Sea Hawk early in the crossing

We met up with our buddy boat the Cormorant II at Dog Island and started the crossing at first light on Monday morning, December 11.

Cormorant II

This is the first time we had a buddy boat for a crossing and it was comforting to see their navigation lights and be able to check in with one another occasionally overnight.  We have made shorter crossings on Lake Superior several times, but never this long.  Marsh and Corinne are long time Canadian sailors and we enjoyed getting to know them.  We found how true it is that you do not want to come into Tarpon Springs before 10:00 am with the rising sun in your eyes to avoid the many crab pots.  We came in about that time and had to keep a close look out.  It was a long exhausting trip as it was difficult to catch any sleep with the heavy motion of the boat.  We managed to stay awake until that evening and slept very well that night, (and the next few nights!).  As hard as this crossing was it was great to be sailing again!  

Bruce is definitely the photo taker in our family.  I could never get such great dolphin shots.  The dolphins just laugh at me!

We found warm weather!  Exploring Tarpon Springs......